Parent Resources

In-depth interviews find that those who screened positive for depression did not explain their experience in terms of diagnostic symptoms.

Many individuals diagnosed with eating disorders describe and internal ‘voice,’ which may be linked to experiences of childhood trauma and dissociation.

When I was training to be a child psychiatrist in the mid-1990s, childhood depression was considered to be rare, related to adversity, and generally unresponsive to pharmaceutical treatment. Since then much has changed. The psychiatrization of the pain and struggles involved in growing up has caused considerably more harm to young people than good. I believe the science is on my side in this conclusion.

When I was a young adult, I was misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder and placed on lithium. I am 61 years old now, living on the edge of end-stage kidney disease. If I could undo everything, by all means, I would not have taken this drug. It is not safe for anyone at any age.

My guardian decided to seek out “professional” advice about how to diminish my “outbursts.” I was perceived as a problem that needed to be extinguished into a compliant state.

Sam Ruck shares a second excerpt from his book "Healing Companions," which describes his life with, and love for, his wife and her “alters.” 

Alterations in gray matter and white matter development found in infants of mothers taking SSRI antidepressants during pregnancy.

The mental health system traumatized me further. They were allies with my abusers to cover up and continue my abuse.

It is important to tell parents the truth about what can and cannot be known about their child. In this way, people come to appreciate that labels and treatments offered by psychiatric professionals are far from being grounded in hard science.

Through journaling, I realized that my lifelong confusion surrounding my memories of traumatic events was the direct result of the psychiatric labels and drugs I swallowed alongside years of parental abuse.

A new study has found that children and adolescents taking a high dose of antipsychotics are almost twice as likely to die of any cause than children on other types of medications.

Why does the U.S. describe perinatal screening as providing a proven benefit, while the task forces in the U.K. and Canada see no evidence of such benefit?

Being re-grounded in my community reminds me that mourning and love are inseparable, and that “nothing about us, is for us, without us.”

My heart envisions a future of grassroots community-based, free, accessible, welcoming, non-judgmental and safe spaces for young people in the middle of the hurricane of adolescence....They will be spaces facilitated by those of us who’ve reclaimed what it means to be human.

Qualitative study examines patterns in teacher attitudes and knowledge related to medication of students for ADHD-type behaviors.

One cause of fragility? Pathologizing our children with psychiatric diagnoses and focusing on a medical solution to life's problems.

It is good that the general public is finally hearing about the ACE Study, but I do not count on U.S. politicians to address the core implications of the ACE findings—the need to re-make U.S. society so as to (1) prevent preventable adverse childhood experiences, and (2) create a society in which healing from trauma can more easily occur.

Yale study finds that training parents how to react to child behaviors is as effective at reducing anxiety as providing therapy to the child.

School Psychologist Scott Greenspan discusses how to promote exercise and mental wellbeing for adolescents stuck indoors during the pandemic.

A new as-yet-unpublished trial of duloxetine (Cymbalta) for fibromyalgia has presented more evidence of suicidal events in teens.

Your diagnosis should serve YOU. Not your parents, your doctors, your teachers, or the next door neighbor. We should be fighting for a future where the person being labeled has the ultimate say over how doctors and therapists view them.

This week, you’ll notice a new name and a new look on this page. The Parent Resources section of Mad in America’s website is now officially the Family Resources section.

A new study suggests the way that marginalized youth view the mental health treatment they have received plays a role in the continuation of their care once they reach adulthood.

My world turned upside down when my daughter nearly died from a serious suicide attempt. After several years as her caretaker I began to wonder: What can we do to change the way our mental health services are organized so they won't turn a crisis into a way of life for already distressed and vulnerable people?

If I had not crumbled, brought to my knees beneath the weight of the misdiagnoses and sordid side-effects of the medications, I would not have had the opportunity to rise up and gain such a strong sense of self—something for which many spend their whole life searching.